Chinua achebe quotes

For people who are coming out of an oral tradition, it is very exciting to get into reading and writing and it is quite interesting how frequently people want to write their own story. Sometimes it is straight history - this is how we came about, how our town was created, a lot of that kind of effort, as soon as literacy came. The first thing you wanted to do was to put something down about who you are or how you are related to you neighbors. Then the next stage would be the stories, the cultural part of the story: this is the kind of world our ancestors made or aspired to.

Women and music should not be dated.

The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.

Do not be in a hurry to rush into the pleasures of the world like the young antelope who danced herself lame when the main dance was yet to come.

Man is sitting disconsolate on an anthill one morning. God asks him what the matter is and man replies that the soil is too swampy for the cultivation of the yams which God has directed him to grow. God tells him to bring in a blacksmith to dry the soil with his bellows. The contribution of humanity to this creation is so important. God could have made the world perfect if he had wanted. But he made it the way it is. So that there is a constant need for us to discuss and cooperate to make it more habitable, so the soil can yield, you see.

To answer oppression with appropriate resistance requires knowledge of two kinds: in the first place, self-knowledge by the victim, which means awareness that oppression exists, an awareness that the victim has fallen from a great height of glory or promise into the present depths; secondly, the victim must know who the enemy is. He must know his oppressor's real name, not an alias, a pseudonym, or a nom de plume!

When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.

The man that brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit.

Only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior. The story outlives the sound of the war drum... The story is our escort. Without it we are blind... It is the thing that sets us apart from cattle.

An artist in my view is always afraid of extremists; he is always afraid of those who claim to have found the ultimate solution to any question.

Every generation must find its mission and fulfill it, as Fanon said - or betray it. So it is not something that you can write up on the wall, saying this is what has to be done. Every generation has to discover what it needs to do.

Nobody can teach me who I am.

I believe in the complexity of the human story, and that there's no way you can tell that story in one way and say, 'this is it.' Always there will be someone who can tell it differently depending on where they are standing ... this is the way I think the world's stories should be told: from many different perspectives.

We live in a society that is in transition from oral to written. There are oral stories that are still there, not exactly in their full magnificence, but still strong in their differentness from written stories. Each mode has its ways and methods and rules. They can reinforce each other; this is the advantage my generation has - we can bring to the written story something of that energy of the story told by word of mouth.

I try as hard as possible not to be pessimistic because I have never thought or believed that creating a Nigerian nation would be easy; I have always known that it was going to be a very tough job. But I never really thought that it would be this tough. And what's going on now, which is a subjection of this potentially great country to a clique of military adventurers and a political class that they have completely corrupted - this is really quite appalling. The suffering that they have unleashed on millions of people is quite intolerable.

It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.

Nigeria is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.

Every lizard lies on its belly, so we cannot tell which has a belly-ache

What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens - whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.

Whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight, then know that something is after its life.

A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.

The ordinary Nigerians have lived as neighbors down the millennia. I was talking about the British who came and merged a whole number of mini states and big states into one unit. But those people were always there, and they always managed to live side by side with their neighbours. So they were not owned or run by one kingdom. It was not practically impossible for these people when they have different languages and religions to be neighbors. So it is that habit of neighbourliness which is destroyed and put under great strain again and again when you have things like massacres.

The reality of today, different as it is from the reality of my society one hundred years ago, is and can be important if we have the energy and the inclination to challenge it, to go out and engage with its peculiarities, with the things that we do not understand. The real danger is the tendency to retreat into the obvious, the tendency to be frightened by the richness of the world and to clutch what we always have understood.

My son even if you want to fall, at least fall where your bones can be gathered

A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village ground it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so.

Mosquito [...] had asked Ear to marry him, whereupon Ear fell on the floor in uncontrollable laughter. "How much longer do you think you will live?" she asked. "You are already a skeleton." Mosquito went away humiliated, and any time he passed her way he told Ear that he was still alive.

The world is large,” said Okonkwo. “I have even heard that in some tribes a man’s children belong to his wife and her family.” “That cannot be,” said Machi. “You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the babies.

In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.

I am against people reaping where they have not sown. But we have a saying that if you want to eat a toad you should look for a fat and juicy one.

One reason why I am quite angry with what is happening in Nigeria today is that everything has collapsed. If I decide to go back now, there will be so many problems - where will I find the physical therapy and other things that I now require?

What I can say is that it was clear to many of us that an indigenous African literary renaissance was overdue. A major objective was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent, and to recast them through stories- prose, poetry, essays, and books for our children. That was my overall goal.

...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.

There is that great proverb — that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.

If you don't like someone's story, write your own.

There is nothing to fear from someone who shouts.

While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.

The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.

No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man.

Charity . . . is the opium of the privileged.

What a man does not know is greater than he.

Ogbuef Ezedudu,who was the oldest man in the village, was telling two other men when they came to visit him that the punishment for breaking the Peace of Ani had become very mild in their clan. "It has not always been so," he said. "My father told me that he had been told that in the past a man who broke the peace was dragged on the ground through the village until he died. but after a while this custom was stopped because it spoiled the peace which it was meant to preserve.

A man who does not lick his lips, can he blame the harmattan for drying them?

When a coward sees a man he can beat he becomes hungry for a fight.

An angry man is always a stupid man.

You must develop the habit of skepticism, not swallow every piece of superstition you are told by witch-doctors and professors.

A disease that has never been seen before cannot be cured with every-day herbs.

Diversity is not an abnormality but the very reality of our planet. The human world manifests the same reality and will not seek our permission to celebrate itself in the magnificence of its endless varieties. Civility is a sensible attribute in this kind of world we have; narrowness of heart and mind is not.

He is a fool who treats his brother worse than a stranger.

Whatever music you beat on your drum there is somebody who can dance to it.

If you only hear one side of the story, you have no understanding at all.

The impatient idealist says: 'Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.' But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.

Procrastination is a lazy man's apology.

When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we see something which you do not see.

Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.

Now one of the changes that must come to Africa is the idea of limited rule, I mean in term of how long one leader can stay in power. The era of president for life is not gone yet but it is on its way out and that is one of the problems with Mugabe and others.

When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.

My weapon is literature

People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what is there in front of them. This is what people have come to expect. Its not viewed as a serious continent. Its a place of strange, bizarre and illogical things, where people dont do what common sense demands.

The sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them.

When brothers fight to death a stranger inherit their father’s estate

Just think of the work you've set yourself to do, and do it as well as you can.

I think not just Nigeria but I think the whole of Africa has to turn back to the rural areas and that's where the majority of the citizens are and that's where the engine of of development has to be found.

When there is a big tree small ones climb on its back to reach the sun.

No man however great is greater than his people

I prefer to go on trying all kinds of things, not to be told, This is the way it is done.

As a rule I don't like suffering to no purpose. Suffering should be creative, should give birth to something good and lovely.

You cannot plant greatness as you plant yams or maize. Who ever planted an iroko tree — the greatest tree in the forest? You may collect all the iroko seeds in the world, open the soil and put them there. It will be in vain. The great tree chooses where to grow and we find it there, so it is with the greatness in men.

Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit -- in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever.

There is no story that is not true.

People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what is there in front of them.

In dealing with a man who thinks you are a fool, it is good sometimes to remind him that you know what he knows but have chosen to appear foolish for the sake of peace.

A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.

Those whose kernels were cracked by benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble.

Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray-a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical & moral deformities

If you have leaders who are prepared to incite group against group it is very easy to manufacture reasons and excuses.

Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform.

Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it's far removed from your situation.

People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.

Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.

Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am - and what I need - is something I have to find out myself.

Become familiar with your home, but know also about your neighbors. The young man who never went anywhere thinks his mother is the greatest cook.

We do not seek to hurt any man, but if any man seeks to hurt us may he break his neck.

Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.

If you don't like someone's story, write your own. If you don't like what somebody says, say what it is you don't like.

Each of my books is different. Deliberately... I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fullness.

Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.

The lizard that jumped from a high Iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no-one else did.

There is a certain increase in the importance I assign to women in getting us out of the mess that we are in, which is a reflection of the role of women in my traditional culture - that they do not interfere in politics until men really make such a mess that the society is unable to go backward or forward. Then women will move in.

The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery.

Wisdom is like a goatskin bag; every man carries his own.

A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk.

It is praiseworthy to be brave and fearless, but sometimes it is better to be a coward. We often stand in the compound of a coward to point at the ruins where a brave man used to live.

There is that great proverb - that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. That did not come to me until much later. Once I realized that, I had to be a writer. I had to be that historian. It's not one man's job. It's not one person's job. But it is something we have to do, so that the story of the hunt will also reflect the agony, the travail - the bravery, even, of the lions.

A goat does not eat into a hen's stomach no matter how friendly the two may be.

A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.

When the British came to Ibo land, for instance, at the beginning of the 20th century, and defeated the men in pitched battles in different places, and set up their administrations, the men surrendered. And it was the women who led the first revolt.

As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us.

If a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings.

A man who makes trouble for others is also making trouble for himself.

We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n'ani ji onwe ya: 'He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.'

When I'm writing, I really want to satisfy myself. I've got a story that I am working on and struggling with, and I want to tell it the most effective way I can. That's really what I struggle with. And the thought of who may be reading it may be there somewhere in the back of my mind - I'll never say it's not there because I don't know - but it's not really what I'm thinking about.

If I hold her hand she says, ‘Don’t touch!’ If I hold her foot she says ‘Don’t touch!’ But when I hold her waist-beads she pretends not to know.

If one finger brings oil it soils the others.

The most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable.

We shall all live. We pray for life, children, a good harvest and happiness. You will have what is good for you and I will have what is good for me. Let the kite perch and let the egret perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break.

Writing is like wrestling; you are wrestling with ideas and with the story. There is a lot of energy required. At the same time, it is exciting. So it is both difficult and easy. What you must accept is that your life is not going to be the same while you are writing. I have said in the kind of exaggerated manner of writers and prophets that writing, for me, is like receiving a term of imprisonment-you know that's what you're in for, for whatever time it takes.

One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.

Almost 30 years before Rwanda, before Darfur, more than 2 million people - mothers, children, babies, civilians - lost their lives as a result of the blatantly callous and unnecessary policies enacted by the leaders of the federal government of Nigeria. It's this charge that's dominated the book's Nigerian press, so far as I can see, the accusation, on the one hand, that Awolowo hatched "a diabolical policy to reduce the numbers of his enemies significantly through starvation - eliminating over two million people, mainly members of future generations.

The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.

A man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness

Dancing is very important nowadays. No girl will look at you if you can't dance.

And theories are no more than fictions which help us to make sense of experience and which are subject to disconfirmation when their explanations are no longer adequate.

There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.

When a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.

The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use.

The language of young men is pull down and destroy; but an old man speaks of conciliation.

It is only the story...that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence.The story is our escort;without it,we are blind.Does the blind man own his escort?No,neither do we the story;rather,it is the story that owns us.

People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that's the time to do something about it, not when it's around your neck.

The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership.

A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday.

The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.

We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.

The problem with leaderless uprisings taking over is that you don't always know what you get at the other end. If you are not careful you could replace a bad government with one much worse!

Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too – If one says no to the other, let his wing break.

When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don't just turn it off one day.